SLAReyesKeniaFall18

When I first began this course, I had no idea what second language acquisition was, especially the "acquisition" part. I made some assumptions just based on the course name. I thought this course would be about how to teach ELL's and how to implement certain strategies into the classroom. After beginning the course, I quickly learned that it was not only going to be about that but much more about the theory and the many different factors that play as a role in learning a second language. If you recall back to my entry 1 vblog, I stated that I was bilingual and throughout my elementary years, I was considered an ELL and was enrolled in ESL classes. As a previous ELL, I thought I had a good grasp of an understanding of the learning of a second language. To my surprise, there was so much I didn’t know. For starters, I had to first understand what SLA was and what it stood for. Ortega defined SLA as “…the scholarly field of inquiry that investigates the human capacity to l...

For this entry, I decided to interview a first grade teacher at the school I am student teaching at: Mr. Guest. Mr. Guest is a first grade teacher at Austin Parkway Elementary who has ELL students as well as native English speaking students. His class is considered a self-contained class meaning he teaches all subjects, ELA, math, science and social studies. Click Here to watch my interview with Mr. Guest! One thing that I did leave out with this interview was stating that Mr. Guest is monolingual and he is ESL certified. In the interview, Mr. Guest states that his ELL students have difficulty with academic level words. For example, words like data, bar graph, collection and more of the higher level words. According to the Bryan Brown: Full Interview on How Language, Identity, and Cognition Impact Students' learning, Mr. Brown states that "....rich parallels between the way students understand ideas and the way they can communicate them" (Brown, 2014). I believe th...